THE FUTURE OF COUNTRY PARKS.
AMONG the transactions in the landed property market recorded last week is one which will be construed, wrongly, as we think, as a sign that the recent shrinkage in the value of landed property is permanent. Whittlebury, in Northamptonshire, said to have been purchased by the late Sir G. Loder for £335,000, was offered for sale by auction, but the bidding did not rise beyond £100,000. This cannot be taken as a measure of the price which wealthy Englishmen are ready to pay for an estate of eight thousand acres, on which the woods and the park alone should be worth that sum in the lifetime of the next generation.
As pleasure, not profit, will largely determine the value of English land in the future, it might repay the present owners to develop and improve their parks, even at the cost of some reduction in the area of their gardens. The "libertie and franchise" of a park or chase have been held since the days of Manwood to be one of the beet privileges of a subject; but the improvement of our country parks has not generally kept pace with the improvement of the gardens or the woods around our large country houses. On most demesnes the management, and consequently the appearance, of the park is almost the same now as it was two centuries ago. It was then that the building of Italian palaces in place of the Tudor and Jacobean manor-houses led to the addition of large arti- ficial lakes, which are the one new feature gained by our parka since their enclosure. But these pieces of water were often of formal outline, to correspond with the symmetry of the Italian gardens and terraces, and where of natural contour, as in the great lake at Blenheim, were left with banks unplanted and the surface unbroken by islands, thus forming inundations rather than lakes, and bearing every trace of an artificial origin. There is often more beauty in a Surrey pond
than in the fifty-acre lake in a great park, with no trees drooping to its bosom, no lovely water-plants blossoming on its surface, no water-fowl dipping on its featureless flat, which lies like a piece of looking-glass, reflecting only the sunlight and the sky. Where the park originally enclosed broken ground, with rock, heather, and running water, the natural beauty never needed any embellishment from human skill. It was sufficient to preserve these as they were, and to add only such living creatures as might give life and interest to the scene. But such parks are rare in the Southern, Eastern, and Midland parts of England. It is not this which we mean when we speak of "park scenery." In most cases the portion of ground enclosed for a park lay round the dwelling-house. This was usually placed in the centre of fertile ground, and when the license to empark was obtained from the Crown a certain number of acres of this fat soil were enclosed, generally with a deer-fence, and planted with groups of timber-trees. Most parks are now so ancient that the manner of their enclosure is forgotten; their main features are now curiously alike. The good soil is rich pasture-grass, and nothing but grass from the outer fringe of the garden to the park railings. This is broken by timber-trees—usually very old and of the finest growth—in groves, clumps, and singly, and these trees in nine cases out of ten are oaks, with a sprinkling of ash, beech, elm, and occasionally Scotch fir, the most distinctly picturesque of park trees. But if we described the contribution of the average English park to landscape as a piece of undulating or flat ground covered with grass (bat without wild flowers), planted with oaks, with a big shadeless pond somewhere in the middle, three or four very neatly gravelled roads crossing it, and a tarred iron deer-fence encircling it, we should give a truthful picture of that region of dullness which surrounds many English country houses. No wild flowers, no animals but deer and rabbits, no fish but carp and tench, little variety in the timber, and the running water more often than not confined in a straight open drain, and taken outside the park by the nearest way. The treatment of the minor streams in Rich- mond Park illustrates this form of park management. If the stream is left in its old course, the natural growth on the banks is usually cut away, and its character destroyed.
What is needed in most parks is not to interfere with Nature, but to restore it. If the modern " Capability Brown" will direct his attention to three main points he will render the park the most charming, instead of being, as it often is, the least interesting, of the surroundings of a country mansion. In the first place, the full play of running waters, where these exist, must be restored to them, and these and the lakes converted into a paradise of flowers, fish, and fowl. For this he will transfer from the costly formal gardens one- third of the staff, and employ the men around the lakes and brook garden. Secondly, portions of the grass park will be enclosed and converted into a wild garden, glorious with flowering shrubs, fern, honeysuckle, and acres of hardy azalias, orange, sulphur-coloured, saffron, and pink, and stocked with the most gorgeous of the hardy pheasants of China, India, and Japan. Lastly, besides the English deer, or in their place, he will introduce herds of less familiar creatures, whose unusual forms and strange and beautiful movements may be a source of constant pleasure and interest. The latter is no mere counsel of perfection. It has been carried out by the owner of Whittlebury in another park in a Southern county, where the marvellous bounds of a herd of antelopes and dainty groups of gazelles may be seen under the shade of English beeches and oaks, while Chinese and Indian deer browse iay the stream, and the turkeys of North America, tue stags of Japan, and wild sheep from the mountains of Sardinia all roam at liberty, and bring up their young. The limits of the " capacity " of our parks in this respect are by no means ascer- tained. But the inmates of the " paradise " at Leonardslee are quite beyond the experimental stage. When considerable herds of Japanese deer, kangaroos, antelopes, gazelles, and Asiatic deer survive the winter and produce young annually. in Sussex, there is no reason to suppose that this great addi- tional interest to park scenery cannot be added in any English county. The interest and amusement of a deer-park are in- creased tenfold by the variety and excitement of watching so many unfamiliar animals living in natural conditions. Those- who desire pleasure from observing the ways of the fallow- deer or the water-rat will appreciate the chance offered in the "improved" park of watching beavers at work, or Indian antelopes at play.
As the ancient purpose of a park was to form a reserve for wild animals, we have dwelt particularly on the proved possibility of a great addition to the number of species so main- tained. Only five animals were anciently set down as beasts of the park or chase—the buck, the doe, the fox, the marten, and the roe—but as the park included "free warren," the partridge, pheasant, hare, and rabbit must be added to the list. Of these the marten and roe have disappeared from our parks. How greatly this list may now be extended is shown by the result of the experiments at Leonardslee ; and from the experience of owners in other counties it appears that the yak, eland, zebra, and roebuck should be added as competitors for entrance to the "new paradise." Besides these, to the future " birds of the park and free warren " should certainly be added the American turkey, South American ostrich, and the Reeve's pheasant. This improvement must be introduced from outside. The restoration and embellishment of brook- scenery, and the adornment of the banks of the lake with the trees natural to such situations, and with the flowers, English and foreign, which love to grow by the lakeside, will be accomplished by transferring " hands " from the over-staffed formal gardens to the park. While the lake is being set with beds of scented crimson water-lilies, and shaded with limes and weeping-willows, and clumps of black-alders and birch, the capacities of the brook should also be considered.
We recently described in the Spectator the charms of brook- -side gardening. In many cases it would be an error to make the stream in the park the centre of such a strip of studied art in Nature. But there is a middle-way between this elaboration and the curious neglect of the streams where they are found in most parks, the only recognition of which is usually marked by one iron grating set across where the brook makes its entry, and another at its exit. Break it into pools with rough dams and waterfalls, stock it with trout, plant its banks with native water-plants, and encourage wild fowl in the shelter so given, and the walk down the brook becomes one of the joys of the park.
We have indicated above the scope of the wilderness gardens set here and there in parks. The main feature must be the hardy azaleas, and other low but brilliant shrubs. The whole may be surrounded with a low fencing, and its object should be to give to parks what they now all lack—colour—from shrubs and large, bright, hardy flowers, bushes, heather, and furze, with the living lustre of large and gorgeous birds. If turned loose in the park, the Oriental pheasants will naturally seek these spots, and remain there, if fed, with little tendency to wander.
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